Colorado · Fiscal notes
Bills and Laws
Updated Oct 12
What a fiscal note is
Colorado prices its own bills before it votes on them. A fiscal note is what the legislature's own nonpartisan staff estimated a bill would cost the state, written again each time the bill changes. This page has read the note on 7,078 of the 7,310 bills listed, at the first version of the estimate and at the last; the rest have no note in this record yet.
Every figure here is a forecast at a version, not a cost.
Find a bill
Type a bill number, or a word from the title. The boxes filter; they never answer — you pick the bill.
Press / from anywhere on this page to jump to the box. When your typing leaves exactly one bill, Enter opens it.
7,310 of 7,310 bills · showing the first 150 — narrow the list, or add more below
"Moved" is the distance between what the state first said a bill would cost and what it last said. A negative figure is a saving, not a mistake. A note books reduced spending as a negative expenditure, and the sign here is the publisher's own. "At introduction" is the earliest note in this cache and "Latest" the last one. The last one is often not a final note. A final note is not guaranteed, even for a bill that became law.
A fiscal note is a forecast at a version. It is not a cost. Every figure above carries the date it was written and the version it describes. What a bill actually cost is a different question, and Colorado does not publish the answer.
This is the one table on this site that needs JavaScript. Every other table here works without it. This one cannot: sending all 7,310 rows at once would make the page too large to load, so the search box, the filters, the sorting and all 16 sessions are put together in your browser.
The finding
Most price tags never move. The ones that do, mostly fall.
Comparing each bill's first estimate with its last needs both to carry a figure. 3,675 bills do. Here is what happened to them.
Of the 1,081 bills whose estimate moved at all, down beats up by about 2.1 to 1. The most common thing that happens to a Colorado bill's price tag is nothing. The second most common is that it is taken out of the bill.
2,213 bills had no state fiscal impact
Their first note prints no impact table, because the state's own analysts found the bill costs the state nothing, and the note says so. That is a finding, not a gap. It is the largest single group here, and it is counted on its own so no other total can absorb it.
512 bills were priced in words
Older notes often print a sentence where a figure would go — "Workload increase and potential cost increases." That is a real published finding. It is carried as the sentence the state wrote, labeled PENDING (qualitative), and it is never turned into a zero.
18 bills were priced only if something happens
Their only table is headed Conditional State Fiscal Impacts — figures stated for a condition that may not hold. A conditional is a different claim from a forecast. So these are kept apart from the bills with a figure and from the bills with none.
The record
What is here
Every bill gets a fiscal note. There is no dollar threshold, so a bill the state expects to cost nothing gets a note that says so.
232 of the 7,310 bills have no note in this cache at all. They are listed with that reason rather than dropped. A bill missing from a list of every bill is the one thing a reader cannot see.
The Outcome column starts in 2025
This page reads what happened to a bill out of the fiscal note. Only a note written after the bill was disposed of prints it. Where a bill in 2025 or 2026 has no such note, the page takes the ending from the bill history on the legislature's own page for that bill: the Governor's signature or veto, a committee voting to “postpone indefinitely”, or a floor vote that lost it. Nothing else. So 1,310 of the 7,310 bills here carry an outcome. Every one of them sits in a 2025 or 2026 session. The other 6,000 are marked Not stated. That is this page not having read it, not the state not having published it. The legislature prints every bill's disposition on the bill's own page, and every bill here links to that page. So the outcome filter narrows you to 2025 and 2026 as well.
What this page will not tell you
Three questions, and one of them has no answer anywhere
What a bill actually cost
No Colorado source reports spending bill by bill. A fiscal note estimates what a bill will cost. The Long Bill — the state's yearly spending act — gives money to departments. Neither says what was spent because of one bill. So the question a reader most wants answered cannot be answered, and no number is offered in its place.
What all these bills add up to
Refused, and not pending better data. A dollar total of these estimates is dominated by single bills in every sample measured. On one sample it moved +83.2% across 200 bills and +3.8% with the one largest swing removed. A total like that is a statement about one bill wearing the clothes of a statement about the legislature.
The per-bill direction is stable. That is what is published instead.
Bills before 2016
PENDING Notes exist for every Colorado bill since 1989, on an older state system that still answers. It is recorded here so the gap is a known absence rather than a silent one. It has not been read yet.
There is no scorecard here and no party column. Adding up the estimated cost of the bills a member sponsored would invent a measure and dress it as a fact. A party column would make everything above it read as a partisan scorecard. This site is neutral infrastructure.
How this is read
Method
Which note comes first
Each bill's notes are put in order by the date each note prints about itself. Where two notes carry the same date, the FINAL banner an older note prints at the top of page one breaks the tie. Where neither settles it — 26 bills — both notes are shown and no direction is claimed. A direction there would be a coin toss wearing a percentage.
This matters more than it sounds. The cached file names do not run in date order: the two are the other way round for every session before 2026. Read them by file name rather than by printed date and "down beats up 2.1 to 1" becomes the opposite claim. Every other check on the page still passes.
Which figure is compared
The comparison is state expenditures in the budget year — the fiscal year the note itself labels as the budget year. Notes print two, three or four years. The column count also changes between versions of the same note. So the year is bound to the ruler the note prints, never to a column position.
What each note is checked against
Where a note prints a fund breakdown, the fund lines must add up to the total the note prints. That total must also equal the figure in the summary table. Both checks run on every read. A note that fails is reported, never quietly dropped.
What a bill is about is the legislature's own summary
Each bill record opens with the Bill Summary written by Colorado Legislative Council Staff, printed word for word from the bill's own page on leg.colorado.gov with the date it was read. This site does not write, shorten or rephrase it. The summary says which version of the bill it describes, and that note is printed beside it. Where the legislature publishes no summary, the record says NOT PUBLISHED and the space stays blank.
Sponsors are shown as the legislature's own identifier
The record gives each sponsor as a web address fragment, such as chris-degruy-kennedy.
Turning that into a name means guessing where the capital letters go, and this site does not
guess about a person's name. Each one links to the legislature's own page, which prints it
properly.
Source
Fiscal notes and vote records are published by the Colorado General Assembly at leg.colorado.gov (opens in a new tab). Notes are required by Joint Rule 22, with House Rule 32A and Senate Rule 25(e). The notes on this page were taken from each bill's own page on the legislature's site on 17 August 2026; the notes of the 139 bills that changed since then were taken again on 2026-09-23; the notes of 4 more bills were taken on 2026-09-24.
School Finance Act
Concerning the financing of public schools, and, in connection therewith, making and reducing an appropriation.
Cost estimates
Every figure here is an estimate by Legislative Council Staff on the date shown, about the version of the bill in front of them that day. It is not a cost.
The appropriation
The bill carries its own money. A note saying a bill “requires and includes” an appropriation means the money is in the bill itself.
An appropriation is money the legislature sets aside. It is not money spent.
The appropriation field, read from the note: The bill requires and includes appropriation increase of $3.8 million in the current FY 2025-26 and a decrease of $8.3 million in FY 2026-27 to the Colorado Department of Education.
Bill summary
The act:
- Increases the statewide base per pupil funding for the 2026-27 budget year by $208.60 to account for inflation;
- Sets a new statewide base per pupil funding amount for the 2026-27 budget year at $8,900.40; and
- Sets the total program funding for the 2026-27 budget year at $10,178,856,871.
Under current law, there are 2 total program formulas that are used to determine a school district's total program, commonly referred to as the old formula and the new formula.
A school district's funded pupil count is a figure that is used as a part of determining a school district's total program. Under the new formula, for the 2026-27 budget year and each budget year thereafter, a school district's funded pupil count is calculated by determining the greater of the school district's pupil enrollment for the applicable budget year or the average of the district's pupil enrollment for the applicable budget year and the immediately preceding 2 budget years.
However, the act requires that when specified conditions are met, a school district's funded pupil count is the school district's online pupil enrollment for the budget year, plus the school district's supplemental kindergarten enrollment for the budget year, plus the school district's extended high school pupil enrollment for the budget year, plus the greater of:
- The school district's pupil enrollment for the budget year;
- An amount equal to 50% of the school district's pupil enrollment for the budget year, plus an amount equal to 30% of the school district's pupil enrollment for the preceding budget year, plus an amount equal to 20% of the school district's pupil enrollment for the budget year that is 2 years preceding the budget year; or
- An amount equal to 97% of the school district's pupil enrollment for the preceding budget year.
A school district's cost of living factor is a figure that is used as a part of determining a school district's total program. Under the old formula and the new formula, the act requires the cost of living factor that was used for the 2025-26 budget year to apply in the 2026-27 budget year.
Under current law, for the 2026-27 budget year, a district's total program is the greater of:
- The district's total program amount for the 2024-25 budget year; or
- The amount calculated for the 2025-26 budget year under the old formula plus an amount equal to 30% of the difference between the amounts calculated between the old formula and the new formula.
The act clarifies that for the 2026-27 budget year, if the calculation under the new formula is less than the calculation under the old formula, then that district's total program for the 2025-26 budget year is the greater of:
- The district's total program amount for the 2024-25 budget year under the old formula; or
- The amount calculated for the 2026-27 budget year under the old formula.
The act permits a school transformation grant recipient that is implementing a priority improvement or turnaround plan to use the grant award to plan for and implement rigorous redesign strategies.
The act changes the provisions that determine the amounts of total program that school districts and the state charter school institute distribute to their charter schools. Related to the changes of these provisions, the act repeals at-risk supplemental aid for charter schools.
The act exempts from a future repeal the general assembly's legislative declaration that using state education fund money for maintaining a website that explains major categories in the chart of accounts for local education providers is a permissible use of state education fund money.
The act repeals the scheduled repeal of, resulting in a continuation of, a statute that authorizes contingency reserve fund payments to be used for rural or small rural school districts if an unusual financial burden would be caused by the withholding of local property taxes due to a delay in filing the audit report due to extraordinary problems that could not have been reasonably foreseen or prevented by the rural or small rural school district. The act adds an assistant superintendent, a vice principal, and an assistant principal to the list of eligible school employees who may receive a salary without a reduction in public employees' retirement association (PERA) benefits if the service retiree meets specified conditions.
The act permits a local education provider to request that the department of education approve the local education provider's use of pencil and paper to complete any or every portion of a state assessment for grades 3 or 4 and requires that the local education provider be responsible for costs owed to the vendor that are associated with the administration of the assessment using pencil and paper.
The act authorizes the state board of education to adopt rules that are necessary to determine the district of residence of a child with a disability for a circumstance that is not described under law.
The act repeals the requirement that $500,000 be distributed to administrative units that enroll children with disabilities and instead requires that $1 million be distributed to fund reimbursements for administrative units that pay tuition or education expenses that ensure a free appropriate public education for a student in out-of-home placement who has an individualized education program.
The act requires the department of education to engage stakeholders concerning public placements in facility schools and on the issue of whether to make recommendations concerning such placements to the state board of education regarding rules or to the general assembly regarding statutes.
Under current law, each participating school food authority that satisfies certain requirements is eligible to receive a local food purchasing grant and an amount to increase wages or stipends for individuals employed to prepare and serve school meals. The act clarifies that a charter school that operates under a participating school food authority is eligible for the awards.
The act:
- Prohibits a board of cooperative services (BOCES) from acting as a statewide authorizer of programs or schools; and
- Limits a BOCES to operating a school or program outside the geographic boundaries of its school district members, unless specified conditions are satisfied.
The act permits a local education provider to offer one or more part-time programs for homeschool students if specified conditions are satisfied.
The act requires an authorizer contracting with an education management provider to maintain appropriate independence from, and oversight of, the education management provider. The act prohibits a school district from creating a contract school that is a full-time complete educational program offered exclusively by a private entity pursuant to a contract with the public entity.
The act appropriates:
- $3,755,558 to the department of education from the state education fund for the state share of districts' total program;
- $313,395 to the department of education from the state education fund for management and administration for information technology services and for use by school district operations for administration related to public school finance; and
- $3,385,203 to the department of education from the state education fund for school district operations for costs associated with holding charter schools harmless for changes in the distribution of total program funding.
The act adjusts the 2026-27 long bill by decreasing:
- $8,502,195 from the appropriation from the state education fund to the department of education for the state share of districts' total program funding; and
- $3,504,995 from the appropriation from the state education fund to the department of education for use by school district operations for at-risk supplemental aid.
FACT Bill summary by Colorado Legislative Council Staff, read 2026-09-23. Printed as published, word for word. Source: leg.colorado.gov (opens in a new tab)
What this bill appropriates
Two totals, two bases. An appropriation is money the legislature authorized to be spent, not money spent. For FY 2026-27, the Long Bill alone appropriates $49,560,763,693 FACT. The Appropriations Report from the Joint Budget Committee staff adds the other bills of the session: $49,694,444,712 FACT.
The General Fund is $17,351,445,407 FACT in the Long Bill alone and $17,461,279,123 FACT in the report. Both are correct, and we never add them. See both totals, with their sources.
Sources: HB26-1410 as enacted (opens in a new tab), chapter 436 of the Session Laws, read 8 October 2026. The FY 2026-27 Appropriations Report (opens in a new tab), read 11 October 2026.